African press review 2 July 2012

Kenya will not surrender to terrorists in spite of recent attacks in the country, Prime Minister Raila Odinga said on Monday. That's the main story in this morning's Daily Nation.

Al-Shebab - who are they?

Speaking at the site of Sunday’s twin church attacks in Garissa Town, which killed 17 worshippers and left 66 injured, Odinga declared that the operation to rid Somalia of Al-Shebab militants will continue until victory is achieved.

Kenyan vice-president Kalonzo Musyoka criticised international media for equating the attacks to a religious war.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga asked Kenyans to support the security forces in the fight against terrorism threatening the whole region. He said Al-Shebab had recently improved links with Al-Qaeda, and there was danger that the terrorist organisations could link up with other groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria to destabilise the entire African continent.

In Uganda, the Daily Monitor reports that detectives from the Criminal Investigations Directorate are investigating officials at the Ministry of Health over the alleged misuse of money given to the country as part of the Global Fund against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The Global Fund cut grants to the country in 2005 over corruption.

The current investigation will focus on how nearly 750 million euros of fund money was spent in 2009 and 2010.

False accounting, the abuse of allowances, exaggerated fuel charges, and fictitious contracts all indicate that gross mismanagement of fund money has taken place.

It is alleged that some health ministry officials posted billions of shillings of global fund finance to their personal accounts.

The fresh allegations come just a few days after the UK government said Uganda will lose billions of euros in budget support over the next four years until a commitment has been shown towards the fight against corruption and human rights abuses.

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Dossier: Sharia wars - Boko Haram v the military in northern Nigeria

ccording to the South African financial paper, BusinessDay, two top rating agencies have warned that the African National Congress’s move towards greater state intervention in the mining industry at its policy conference is causing concern and a threat to investor confidence.

All three main global agencies — Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s — have given their credit ratings for South Africa a negative outlook, which means the next move could be a downgrade.

A report commissioned by the ANC and discussed at last week's policy conference, proposed a 50 per cent resource rent tax on mining "super profits", increased regulation of the sector, and price and export controls for minerals considered to be "strategic".

South Africa’s mining sector contracted by nearly 17 per cent in the first quarter of this year, hit by a prolonged strike at Impala Platinum as well as by soaring costs for electricity and labour.

In Nigeria, The Guardian reports that members of the Senate panel probing the management of fuel subsidy regime yesterday sought explanations from the Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on the foreign account allegedly managed by the Corporation.

Okonjo-Iweala disclosed that the Federal Government had paid the naira equivalent of 200 million euros fuel subsidy in the first half of this year.

The government also paid nearly two billion euros as subsidy arreas for 2011, bringing the total amount paid out this year alone to nearly three billion euros.

According to the journalistic wisdom normally attributed to John B. Bogart, who edited the New York Sun in the early years of the twentieth century, when a dog bites a man, it's not news. But if a man bites a dog, that IS news. According to today's edition of the regional paper, The East African, a Texan 22-year-old, Michael Terron Daniel, under the influence of synthetic marijuana, bit his family's pet dog and killed it. He was charged with cruelty to animals, which is a felony under Texas law.